Death and Survival
by reithedragonboy
Summary: Just a one-shot I came up with spur of the moment. It revolves around Cloud as he ponders on the things that has happened to him in the past. It spans the entire Final Fantasy VII series up to after the events of Advent Children. hope you all enjoy it!


Hello everyone! This is a one-shot I had thought up while I was thinking about how all of the different Final Fantasies were made to resemble. For example, the 1st one was a prototype of sorts; the second/forth had a more medieval "knight and castle" thing going on; three/six was highly technological, in a sense; eight was more modern, yet very militaristic in nature, nine was like a old fashion Chinese soap opera, where commoner/thief fell in love with a princess of royal blood and they did not get along well until some time later and all that jazz; and ten on up is your basic next generation style. See how they all had their own style into it?

Well, I was thinking how seven did not really a style to call its own until I started to play the entire series. Because of that, I can classify the whole of Final Fantasy VII as as story of not only survival, but also death. It is from this that I had come up with this one-shot as a story basis.

As a basis for my classification, I placed all the sad/horrific/sad scenes that have been seen and experienced through the eyes of a certain character; namely, Cloud Strife, the blond Shinra infantryman who never made into SOLDIER, yet became the savior of the world at what I consider the cost of his very own being.

Sorry if I bored you with his side note, though I felt it was a bit necessary so you would not be confused when you read the story. If you still decide to read after seeing this long note, then please do not forget to leave a review! Thank you!

Oh, and just as a closing note, I made this all in one day. It was a sort of a "spur of the moment" idea and I got really caught up in it, so sorry if some info pertaining to Cloud's life is inaccurate of missing. Thanks again!

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Sometimes, when I stay awake in the middle of the night, trying desperately to let sleep consume me and failing miserably, my mind wanders around the many memories that have buried themselves deep into my mind. I have many memories embedded into my mind, and I have many more restless nights to match them in numbers. I've seen almost all of these vivid memories more than twice, the worst ones easily taking the place of the very few pleasant ones I have left. Many of these unpleasant ones...are those that I wish I could just forget; memories that I wish more than anything else would just disappear from the darkest corners of my mind.

Today was no exception; I am having another restless night, tossing around on my bed before settling to just laying on my back and staring at the plain white ceiling. The memories of my past are now invading my mind, the only solace I can possibly find here in this world full of death and destruction; sadness and pain; gains and losses. I have gained a few things throughout this entire damned life I lived, but I have lost ten times more than that.

As I let my mind wander around on its own knowing full well it'll revisit any memory it wants no matter how hard I want it not to, I am taken back to the place where my life had begun its damned and cursed path.

Nibelheim... That day was the day that my life started to fall apart. My town was destroyed by the very man that I had looked up to as an idol, a hero, and possibly a mentor; the great General and hero at the time, Sephiroth. The scent of the burning buildings, the sounds of the people shouting in agony, the images of people lying on the ground in the pool of their own blood; those images still stay fresh in the abyss of my mind, despite the fact that this tragic event took place six of seven years ago. That was the very first loss I had ever experienced. Everybody I knew in my hometown was dead. The places I knew and grew up around, gone and erased in a heartbeat, the flames of death instantly killing everything it licked.

However, I defied those flames, flames that barely brushed my skin, yet never managed to maintain its grip on me. I survived the very attack that left my hometown as a pile of rubble and ashes. I survived where others of my hometown could not. Why did I survive? Why was I the only one who lived through the tragedy, only to bear witness to more tragedies to come?

For me, fate always had something cruel to pull over me. After bearing witness to one of the most horrific things that I had ever seen in my life, I was thrust into another hectic moment. Weak from the ordeal and injured while trying to extract revenge against the person who took the only home known to me, I was forced into one of the cruelest things that probably even life itself would find deplorable. I, along with my best friend, who was also knocked unconscious by our common enemy, was made into test subjects for sick and horrible experiments performed and overseen by the most insane scientist to have ever graced the planet. Injections were a new regularity in my life; the pain from various other experiments also in accompaniment to it.

I also witnessed the many other people who were survivors of my destroyed hometown being brought in and experimented on. Most of them were those I have grown up with when I was younger. All of them screamed in pain and anguish a few days after being brought in, the sound soon dying down to nothing but soft moans; their very life waning on the edge of death until the very end, unable to handle the ghastly experiments anymore. In the end, only I and my best friend, Zack, survived the entire torturous ordeal.

However, I might have succumbed to death too if it were not for him being there for me, giving me hope when I had thought it lost, giving me something else to think about other than all the pain and other things being done to me. He was my very lifeline in the darkest days of my life, the very person who showed me a thin ray of light through the darkest of caves.

It was because of him that I survived the experiments and the pain that came with the experiments that were done to me. It was because of him that I survived another ordeal and lived to see another one not only a year later, miles away from where we were being held captive. Why did I survive through all the pain I suffered? Why did I survive another painful ordeal only to live through and bear witness to another, and probably the most emotional, ordeal?

Miles away from where we were first held captive and a little less than a year later, Zack had managed to carry me around with him wherever he went. I was physically unable to do anything a normal person could do, including moving and talking, because of all the experiments that were done to me. I still bore the mark of the vileness done to me, but I was also living proof as a survivor of such gruesome things. Zack, though, was lucky enough to be as normal as he could be; even his very demeanor did not seem to change a bit, despite being stuck in that lab for about four years, a fact that I had only figured out a few days before that fateful day.

The sky had just started to grow dark with the sight of dark rain clouds threatening to spill its tears onto the barren land that was native to Midgar. Zack had left me near an outcropping of rock, trying to hide me from the threat that loomed over the horizon and was steadily making its way towards us. The next thing I knew, shots were fired, their sharp noise reaching my ears as I felt myself slowly regaining my mental capabilities. Bodies falling with a loud thud managed to also reach my ears through the complete hectic scene that I could only imagine.

Was it an hour later? I was not sure. For all I knew, it could have been an entire year and I would not have known. All I knew was that the entire land had grown quiet once more. Not even a sound was heard over the light pitter-patter of the rain that had started to fall some time ago. It was at that moment I knew what had happened; my best friend, Zack, had lost.

Immediately attempting to make my way to where I saw his body lying face-up towards the sky, the rain washing away the pool of blood that had collected around him and off his face, I felt myself break down inside. I was still somewhat sick from all the experiments, but I was still able to feel my heart ache with the pain of seeing my friend the way he was; slowly bleeding his life away as I continued to crawl towards him; desperate to try and help him in some way.

Just to look over his bullet-ridden body was a hard thing to do; warm blood still seeped out from the many wounds behind his armor. His eyes were still burning with the fire and energy I had come to associate with Zack, although it was severely diminished and slowly waning. As my sickness started to wear thin, I managed to call out his name and see him react with a smile upon hearing my voice. It was through this smile that he was somehow able to muster the strength to speak to me. He spoke to me with his last dying breath of the things that he wanted me to do. He was imparting his dying wishes to me.

Then, after all was said and done, he handed me his most prized possession, his Buster Sword that he had acquired from his mentor, whom, if I remember what he had told me, had passed it onto Zack in the same manner as he was now, lying on the floor and slowly dying. A few moments later, he smiled one last time and his eyes closed, hiding the dying remnants of the fire that hid behind those eyes. He had died…

Once again, I had survived another ordeal. I had survived another potential death, this time at the cost of my best friend's life; the life that had taught me many things and helped me through the darkest days of my life. That very life had now disappeared and would never grace me with its presence again.

How was it that I came to survive a death that was directed at the both of us? Why was it that I survived a fate that was meant for the both of us? Most importantly, why was I always able to survive these many ordeals, each of them unfolding before me as if it were nothing but a mere detour in my life? Why was fate so cruel to me, allowing me to live and carry the burden of witnessing all these heart-wrenching events wherever I go? Why was it so cruel?

Unfortunately, fate found all this torture upon me amusing and decided to have me witness another tragedy.

It was about a good year later after the death of Zack. At the time, I had my memories altered and was trying to live out the life I remembered my best friend to have lived. It was while I was living my false life that I met the woman that my friend had fell in love with and was trying to come back to. She was the flower girl that he had told me about and was hanging around with during most of his free time. Her name was Aerith.

She was truly a pretty girl. Even though I had adopted the lifestyle and certain habits of Zack, I was still in my own mindset, and so I never really did recognize her in the same was Zack did. Even when she told me that she had another boyfriend and, later on during the journey we had partaken, his name, I still did not remember anything my best friend had told me about her. I did, though, saw her as a very good friend, one whom one could tell anything to without fear.

Unfortunately, her fate was just the same as all of the other people I have seen. She had left to the City of the Ancients, leaving for there to call upon a magic that would save the planet from a calamity that threatened to destroy the world. I, along with a group of friends and allies, managed to find her praying at an altar, but it was already too late. Sephiroth, the very same man who had destroyed Nibelheim and, in turn, my entire life, had came of nowhere and killed Aerith with one fell swoop. It happened so quickly; I did not even have a chance to react against him. While I was still grieving for the loss of another friend, he summoned a monster, whom he had deluded himself into thinking that it was a piece of his true mother, and had me and my friends fight it as he made his escape.

We all managed to fight against the monster and win, but it was an empty victory. Aerith, the woman whom was the first person I had made friends with, ever since the incident with Zack a year ago had died right in front of me. She died with a smile on her face, the same exact look he had on when he passed on.

And so, I had lived through yet another tragedy. Grief struck me so hard, I had found it near impossible to even try and move on. Fate had once again played its twisted game and forced me to suffer another loss. And the most ironic thing about this was that there wasn't anything that was a severe threat against my life, sans the monster that was summoned earlier. Even then, I had not died. I had survived this tragedy…

As I came back to reality, I noticed something wet and warm streaking my cheeks. I didn't bother to bring my hand up to check what it was. I knew that it was my tears; tears that always fell whenever I had a restless night like this one. It would always be at the end of my brooding that I would always cry. The tears I shed now and all the other times are testament to all the pain I have felt and witnessed, yet have also survived at the cost of other's lives.

As I cried these tears, I asked myself the same question I asked myself every night ever since I've regained my true self: Why does fate toy around with my life so? Why does it twist it to the point that I am forced to bear witness to the destruction of my hometown, my best friend and most of all, my very life? Why was I forced to live through one deadly tragedy only to become involved in another?

As I cried on, knowing that no one would come to comfort me for I had locked the only entrance to my room and isolated myself from the outside world every night, I came upon another question that I had never asked myself before. It was, perhaps, the very question that I had so desperately wanted an answer to ever since my hometown of Nibelheim was burned down, only to be revived through its ashes by the hands of the Shinra Company in an attempted cover-up.

Why had fate forced me to bear witness to the deaths of everybody and everything I had cared about? Why was it that I always survived imminent death at the cost of other people's lives? Why was it that I was forced to live a cursed life… A life…of death and survival?


End file.
